Certainly there are those who love Kaohsiung and even prefer it to Taipei. I’m not one of those people. I appreciate it on a base level, but can’t go beyond that. There are a couple areas I like a lot, like Pier 2 and Lotus Pond. But overall, it doesn’t do much for me since I’m not a beach person and I’m not big into hiking either.
Osaka isn’t a very good analogue since the only commonality really is it also being the second largest city in its respective country. Is it the second largest? Maybe second most well known. Anyway, Osaka is a very densely populated urban environment with a heavy emphasis on nightlife, cosplaying, and local delicacies. I think Kaohsiung is sleepier, while it is urban it’s more spread out, and there’s a much greater emphasis on the beaches and ports. I guess Osaka is also a port city, but having spent time there I just don’t feel they’re that similar. I think @afterspivak is right with Fukuoka being most similar (and I like my pick for Busan as a Korea analogue).
Family in from Kyushu/Fukuoka region, I see it more like Hsinchu in Taiwan? and Oska like Kaoshuing.
Fukuoka-Kita still growing in population like Hsinchu. Fukuoka–Kitakyushu is the start up capital of Japan, more like Hsinchu. Fukuoka is the 6th (or maybe 5th) biggest city in Japan like Hsinchu. O-saka has a huge port like Kaoshuing, as well good Japan food (I find Japanese food here better elsewhere in taiwan). Osaka has nice night life, Kaoshuing has but less but still nice beer bars, sake bars and pub like places.
The Waisheng Ren thing is a thing of the past. They barely exist here as a distinguishable group anymore.
I recommend you go to the cheaper place as you are on a budget, Kaohsiung will be fine .
Taipei you will not be able to to afford to eat well and party anyway especially as you aren’t working (officially anyway ) and rents are higher.
If you dip into your savings Taipei will be fine too.
As for learning Chinese you gotta do your best to mingle and make friends I guess. I don’t think it’s easy to find as Taiwanese are pretty obsessed with speaking English with white people in many cases and they speak Chinese in quite a slangy way and also at a fast pace , for instance it’s very hard to learn Chinese from their media,maybe some YouTubers with subtitles only
Also many young people don’t have great conversational skills IMHO. It’s better to come here and work and live here longer keep your expectations limited as six months is not a long time
Even though I dislike China for many things I think it’s probably a much better place for learning Chinese.
I studied Chinese for two and half years part time , worked with Taiwanese and I’m still just ok.
I vote for Kaohsiung over Taipei. Long-term Taipei resident here. Taipei City is just too expensive for your budget. Tamsui is so far away that you will rarely go to Taipei and there is far less to do there than Kaohsiung. The rent is the key.
Accents among young people are identical and the greater importance of Taiwanese will not be an issue for you. If anything, it will be a plus because it will help you understand Taiwan’s linguistic diversity better.
If my goal was learning Chinese in six months, and I had the 25,000 NT scholarship, I would go to Kinmen.
If I didn’t have the scholarship and my goal was learning Chinese I would go to China, to a small rural town.
The reason I would make those choices is that I think those would be better ways of getting full immersion, which would allow significant progress in a short time.
I have stayed in small rural towns in china, hardly a word of Mandarin was spoken. The local schools and collages would give the kids a mandarin test to determine their future.
The reading and writing didn’t matter too much it was the accent that was graded, it was something like below 60% no further education place was available even if the child was gifted in all other areas, above 60% would be offered vocational training, the top 10% would be offered an academic placement. This process would be repeated as they move up the educational ladder.
The “Standard Mandarin” speakers end up moving away for better opportunity’s, the people who are left behind have a wonderful local dialect, completely different to the town across the river
I learned Chinese in a town like that. It doesn’t matter what language or dialect they speak. All that matters is that Mandarin is the only one that you share with them. In the town in China where I learned they speak a language that is unique to that town and one other town only. Obviously you are not going to ‘perfect’ your Mandarin in that kind of context, however if the goal is to make lots of progress from a low to a functioning level in six months this is definitely what worked for me.
It had the opposite affect on me, really set me back, so I would say know your own learning style before investing the time like this.
Not really relevant in Taiwan but there was more than once I was questioning my own ability’s when it was in fact the shop owner who didn’t know the mandarin for cola, or how to tell me how much it was.
I wouldn’t go to Kinmen. Small places in Taiwan are pretty closed to outsiders at first and there are very few young people. You won’t be immersed. You’ll be isolated in an community of aging Minnan speakers with whom you will have little in common.
Also, at least for the younger me, immersion didn’t work very well. I tried something like this for my first few months in Taipei. My Mandarin made very little progress. I actually made far more interesting Taiwanese friends through my foreign friends. These people and their friends were key to my initial progress with the language outside the classroom.
I think opennness to new things, empathy, going with the flow, and not trying to replicate your old life in Taiwan are much more efective/important than immersion.
That said, getting a job where you have to use Mandarin is an incredibly useful near-immersion experience. For me that came later but led to enormous advances in my Mandarin.
Maybe learning style, but also level. The OP said he was at HSK3 so I was presuming that he could order a coke already. I was more thinking about having sustained interactions in the language.
When I went to Kinmen for two days I wound up having several extended conversations with locals. Wanted to know my life story and told me about theirs etc. Other places in Taiwan what I have encountered that kind of thing where people will talk with you was in Chiayi and in Hualien, I have never experienced that happening in Taipei though. Lots and lots of great things about this city but in my experience getting Chinese language immersion is not one of them.
Exactly. You’ll struggle to find opportunities to practice in a short time in Taipei. Anyway six months is nothing learning Chinese to a higher level takes much longer than that. The best way is working or living with Taiwanese who only speak Mandarin. Getting younger Taiwanese out of their shell to actually talk more is another challenge. Don’t think it is really any different in Kaohsiung than Taipei really although Kaohsiung the pace of life is slower so there is that.
cept Chiayi is the definition of boredom, well worse than Changhua. And Hualian is SHAKE CITY in taiwan. LOTS of quakes. you better like them.
my personal way learning mandarin. Now granted I already spoke taiwanese, but taiwanese is so different from mandarin, its like french and spanish. So when i moved from a taiwanese speaking part of town to a largely mando speaking part of taipei in the early 70s i came across people who spoke mandarin. Was like being in a foreign land. I could not put together a sentence in mando at that time. I learned primarily from 3 things:
acquired a taiwanese girlfriend who spoke some english and taiwanese although not fluent in either who corrected my mandarin as much as i corrected her english.
watched a lot of tv news. Which was all in mandarin. And I learned what a lot of words meant, and many many phrases, which led to sentences and eventually my english powered brain could translate enough mandarin to actually communicate in basic form at first but this got better.
Then I started working and everyone white collar in TAipei speaks mandarin at work. Its the language of biz in Taipei largely at least white collar. Down south in Ktown a lot of taiwaese was spoken in biz.
So these three factors made my mandarin quite fluent in time. Took about five years to be comfortable and speak without halting too much.
Mandarin messes up your english. be ware.
THEre is no quick mando learning i think. it just takes years and years.
Chiayi City is getting better than you remember, with cool cafes and the like popping up. Have a look, for example, at this joint. It would not look out of place in West Berkeley.
Yes, there is definitely more going on these days in Taiwan’s smaller cities like Chiayi and Pingtung. I don’t want to oversell it though. I don’t think there is a burgeoning night life scene in these cities. But you could always take the train north or south to Taichung or Kaohsiung for some of that. Which you will definitely not be able to afford in Taipei.
Another big plus of Chiayi for me is that it is the gateway to Alishan and the big central mountains. Much to explore there.
thats great to hear, i have been watching random vids about travel to taiwan from asian travellers. A lot of them focus on the well known spots mostly taipei but some venture into kaohsiung and taichung, tainan. And these are nice to watch as a lot of them showcase some new cafes/restaurants in TAipei and Ktown, TAichung , etc. There seems to be a renaissance happening with new chic places showing up all over Taiwan.
Glad to hear Chiayi is getting some cool places too.
my forays into chiayi to be honest date mostly from 1986/87 when i used to visit a friend in chiayi. And stayed over night. At that time there were very few cafes of note, i cant remember a name now but one was a pretty nice siphon coffee place and there other was this cafe/restaurant/night club type place called ATT. Which was rather hip like one of the Taipei hip restaurants called PASSION which was very hip back in the day up to the early 90s i think? There was a great japanese restaurant my bud used to take me to, can’t remember the name. Just remember one time him and me went to the japanese restaurant and got plastered . Him more than me . He still insisted on driving me to my hotel (which really honestly he should not be driving in that state) and which in my drunk self I agreed to. got to my hotel safely and next day went to his house by taxi and found someone had dented a door of my car ! Then he mentioned “getting home safely but may have had a bit of a problem parking and maybe dented some dudes car” … yes my car !! DANG. lucky it wasnt worse.
so chiayi was a place you only stayed at as a stopover to get to alisan in those days with little to do other than a few places to eat and have a cupa joe.
Anyway, Osaka is a very densely populated urban environment with a heavy emphasis on nightlife, cosplaying, and local delicacies. I think Kaohsiung is sleepier, while it is urban it’s more spread out, and there’s a much greater emphasis on the beaches and ports. I guess Osaka is also a port city, but having spent time there I just don’t feel they’re that similar. I think @afterspivak is right with Fukuoka being most similar (and I like my pick for Busan as a Korea analogue).